Tigers make smart hire in Ausmus, who was 'born to manage'

By
Matthew B. Mowery, The Oakland Press

Monday, November 4, 2013

DETROIT — Sometimes, you have to do things to find out what you don’t want to do.

For former big-league catcher Brad Ausmus, having three years in an amorphous role like “special assistant to the general manager” might offer plenty of freedom to do what he wanted, learn what he wanted and explore what he wanted.

But, it wasn’t what he wanted.

“It allowed me to get the front-office perspective that I didn’t have as a player,” he said Sunday, before later admitting it wasn’t his cup of tea. “I’m a foxhole guy.”

The 44-year-old Ausmus, just three years removed from the end of his 18-year big-league career behind the plate, is now back in the foxhole — or at least the dugout of a major league team, hired Sunday by the Detroit Tigers to be their 37th manager.

He’s signed to a three-year deal with a team option for a fourth. Financial terms were not disclosed.

He replaces Jim Leyland, who stepped down a little less than two weeks ago, after leading the Tigers to three straight appearances in the American League Championship Series.
Ausmus understands what a golden opportunity he’s been parachuted into, calling a glance at the heart of the lineup he’ll manage “like Christmas.”

“We’re not going to reinvent the wheel here. This is a pretty darned good team. I’m not going to come in here and make sweeping changes,” Ausmus said. “I’m well aware that you don’t generally get dropped into a situation like I will be this coming season, with a team like the Detroit Tigers have. Very rarely is there a managerial change when a team is coming off a postseason appearance, or an ALCS appearance. I understand I’m very fortunate.

“That being said, I’m not taking anything for granted, no details will be glossed over. I’m not assuming anything going into the job.”

One of the things he did not take for granted was his own limited resume. His only managerial experience came as the manager of Team Israel in the World Baseball Classic qualifiers last spring.

“I certainly knew, going into any of these managerial interviews that the one knock on me is going to be the lack of managerial experience. And I understand that,” Ausmus said.

“One of the plusses is ... I’m going to have someone standing beside me in the dugout with plenty of not only managerial experience, but he’s been a third base coach, he’s been a bench coach, he’s been around the game for decades. Good friend of mine, and quite frankly is the guy I would’ve had as the bench coach regardless. It just so happened that he was already here, in Gene Lamont.

“Hopefully that mitigates some of the lack of experience.”
Lamont, who wanted to be a candidate for the job himself, won’t mind being a mentor to one of the bright young minds he’s been a staunch proponent of, over the years, since their time together with the Astros. Dombrowski said that members of the Boston Red Sox organization indicated that Lamont would have brought Ausmus along as his own bench coach, had he gotten the managerial job there two seasons ago.
The rest of the coaching staff is still in the process of being assembled.

Leyland’s thoughts on the hire, when Dombrowski told him?

“He said, ‘He’s brilliant,’ ” Dombrowski relayed Sunday.

A Dartmouth grad, with a degree in government — termed political science most other places — Ausmus was one of the smartest players around.

That came through loud and clear in Dombrowski’s long search, where he picked as many brains as he possibly could — guys like Leyland, Joe Torre, Tony La Russa.

It still surprised him when he sat down with Ausmus, one-on-one, to interview last Monday.

“I don’t think I shook Brad’s hand twice in my life. I didn’t know him at all. Frankly, when we interviewed, we were taken aback at how impressive he was,” said Dombrowski, who whittled down the candidates list from an initial 50 or so names to the final six he considered — and four he ended up interviewing. [For links to all the steps in the process, CLICK HERE.]

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, in the one sense. I called a lot of people ... and I didn’t find a negative word about him, and everybody was extremely complimentary in every regard. I mean, I called a lot — and I called people from years ago. It’s rare that you would get that many compliments on an individual. And it all kept coming back back to those words: leadership, intellect, baseball intellect, experience, communication skills. It just kept coming back to the same perspective. ...

“They told me ... ‘Everybody knew that he was the smartest guy in the room, but he’d never act that way.’ And they always knew he was going to be a manager. ... It always came back to the fact that this guy was born to manage. You could tell that many years ago.”

He knew it too, in a way.

“When I played, I enjoyed the cerebral part of the game. What I didn’t enjoy was having to hit,” the career .251 hitter and three-time Gold Glover said, joking: “Dave told me in this role, I don't have to hit.”

He knows he’s going to have to hit the ground running, considering the big shoes he has to fill.

“I think the most important thing is, I gotta be me. Jim Leyland — a great, Hall of Fame manager. I’m not going to be Jim Leyland. I would never make an attempt to be Jim Leyland,” Ausmus said. “I’m going to be who I am, and if that translates into being a players’ manager, or being a little bit tougher at times, then that’s what it’s going to be.”

It wasn’t where the Tigers had initially sought to look.

Managerial experience was something that was going to be important, everyone assumed. So was familiarity — like Dombrowski had with the other candidates he interviewed.

That’s not how it worked out, though.

“Years ago, when you’d look at that list, you’d see a lot of guys that were out there managing 10, 12, 14 years at the minor-league level, that ended up coaching at the big-league level, then were all of a sudden ready to manage. That’s how they paid their dues. Now what happens is, a lot of the players, who are paid substantially more than they used to be, sidestep that managing in the minor leagues. They don’t really do that. Yet, they’re still involved in the game, in a special assistant capacity. They’re helping on the field in some respect,” Dombrowski said of the new fad in baseball, of hiring former players with limited to no experience.

“I think he has a chance to be a very good, big-league manager for a long time, and to help us win right now. And that was always part of our process. I have no no question that somebody would look at Brad and say, ‘Oh he’s going to be a tremendous manager.’ The question also for us, the additional step, was ‘Can he help us win right now?’ And our answer to that was yes.

“We think through his knowledge of the overall game, his leadership capabilities, his ability to communicate, build a good staff around him, that he can help us do that.”

Even though it’s not how the search was planned to go, it turned out well, in Dombrowski’s estimation.

“It was probably not where I started, but it's where we ended, and I feel really good about that,” he said. “After a thorough research, information-gathering, research by the people that helped me ... many conversations in baseball, we feel that we made a tremendous selection to guide us.”

Matthew B. Mowery covers the Tigers for Digital First Media. Read his “Out of Left Field” blog at opoutofleftfield.blogspot.com.